An important feature of a dimmable electronic ballast is the ability to ignite the lamp at any dim position. It is difficult to determine when the lamp strikes, since lamp ignition is a function of filament pre-heating, temperature, frequency, distance to the nearest earth plane (usually the fixture) and age of the tube. If the regulation loop is not closed immediately after ignition (hundreds of micro-seconds), the result is an unwanted "flash" over the tube before going to the user dim setting (or lamp brightness setting).
In a conventional lamp resonant output stage, the frequency of operation at which the tube strikes is usually close to the maximum brightness operating frequency during running. Therefore, all present day fluorescent lamps are ignited close to 100% brightness. The travel time to a low brightness setting after ignition results in a "flash" seen by a user.
Furthermore, if a conventional lamp circuit falsely detects an ignition when the lamp has not yet ignited, the circuit will close the loop and regulate back out of ignition to somewhere between the ignition and preheat frequencies. This results in dangerously high voltages and currents across and through the tube and in the ballast output stage for an indefinite amount of time.